A Second Look
by Orokid
Summary: One sided love ends up being the most painful of experiences... even after a few years have passed. Yaya x Hikari


Orokid: This… is a weird one-shot

**Orokid:**_ This… is a weird one-shot. Even I have to admit to it. I was thinking about what happened a little while back to me, and then I thought about what Yaya might experience if she had gone through the same thing… and I figured that it would probably be about the same thing. Only warnings I can give are that there is a bit of irrational thinking, but no character death, and that coming to face something head on before your ready to is probably not a good idea._

_Anyway, that's all I have to say… other than that I'm sorry for writing this depressing piece of… well, you know._

**A Second Look**

I remember many things now, long after the charade has passed and how I've become stuck in a moment where nothing has changed, where the world has stood still- even as it continues to turn. It's strange, and it's a harsh reality at times, but I have continued living and breathing despite what I've thought about doing several times in the past. I smile, I laugh, I inhale and exhale- just like any other person in this world. I'm normal.

At least, I am to most standards of living these days.

No one can view inside my heart, and no one probably will from the way that I've blocked it away from the world. I stopped wanting to give my all, and I don't think that I ever wanted to be someone's somebody. I had buried that organ of life and death deep underground, deeper than any memory or feeling that I've pushed down into myself, and I left it there to rot and die. I liked it that way, and sometimes I think that I still do.

But then I get home, and everything changes. I change. The person I had once been, the feelings that I once felt, come raging back, and I can't do anything except collapse onto my bed, exhausted from the effort I had put forth for the entire day. My hands wrap around my body where I had always dreamed your arms would be. I would revel in the feeling, pretending that you were there holding me so- but reality would crash back into me harshly and remind me of the pitiful existence that I've been since you had pushed me away.

And after I weep my soul out, I would dig up that heart I'd buried and smother it with an affection that I'd always wished for. Afterwards, I'd look at that knife set on the kitchen countertop and think of what was worth living for.

I'd come up with the same answers each time.

I suppose that the hardest time ever was when I had been asked to accompany a friend to a gathering, one that I had at first disagreed vehemently toward. I had known what I would see, and I had known just what I would have to face if I had gone. For the first time since I'd graduated from the school we had both gone to, since I had opened up my heart and soul to you, I would be forced to face a passion and heart ache that I had been avidly avoiding.

But I had, for some reason, agreed to go with my coworker for the sake that I owed her for something or another. She needed a friend to be there, to hold her hand as she confronted things about herself, and she needed me to be there to be her pedestal to lean upon so that she should grow strong. In all truths, I don't know why I had gone, let alone why we had gone in a single car.

And I had stood there by the punch bowl, sipping a drink of who-knows-what so to ignore what is so painfully obvious in front of me. You and her, dancing and serenading one another as the disk jockey played one tune after another. Your hands never left hers, and your eyes never seemed to lose that sparkle as I had secretly hoped you would for the past year and a half. You looked just as much in love as the last time we had seen one another.

Yet you didn't turn around and look at me this time. Your eyes were focused on whom you were with, whom you wanted the most.

It was about then that I had realized that I had been standing next to a former mutual friend the entire time, and that she had been talking to be for at least the last five minutes if not more. She had to have known that I wasn't listening all that much, just enough to know whether to nod or mutter that word of listening that so many used, and enough to ask how she and her lover had been since I'd last seen her. I hadn't listened to her answers, but I had still asked.

It didn't stop her from pretending that life was still as happy and joyful as it had been in school. I had known better, having lived out in the real world without a hand to hold or a heart to call my own, and I knew that I had become cynical about life since the happy days of our childhood.

I just knew better than she ever would.

"Are she happy?" A voice so sad and lonely, a hitch of sadness catching hold of a few words and causing it to crack… It had been my voice, I had realized mere seconds later. The question had left my lips without a thought to them, and I cursed my brain for not catching the question sooner. While my eyes could not lie, I had wanted nothing more than to pretend that everything was fine, that I was fine, and that I shouldn't cause anyone to worry.

But there I was, close to tears, voice cracking as I watched you and she slow dance to a song I knew was your favorite.

"Yes. She's happy. Very happy, Yaya."

A smile crossed my lips, though only I knew how bitter it really was, and I had turned and gazed at the young woman next to me with a laugh in the back of my throat. It was a laugh that I did not mean, and that I did not want, but it was there for security measures nonetheless. A nod, an understanding of what the girl had said, and a simple, "I'm glad", had left my lips before I had lost my nerve and walked away.

And, even if I was a coward to do so, I had wanted to escape before the tears of regret and hurt finally fell.

I caught a ride home in a taxi, and I hadn't minded the six thousand eight hundred yen toll just because I would be able to return to the safety of home… away from you and your happiness. I collapsed onto my bed yet again, crying harder than ever into my pillow. I called in sick at work for the next couple days, not wanting anyone to see me as I truly was- alone, and in constant sorrow despite my proud show of the otherwise.

Life had returned back to normal after that, I suppose. I still smiled, I still laughed, and I still breathed in and out just as easily as before. Nothing had pretty much changed at all

Except that, when I would get home every evening, I would take a second glace at that knife set.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXX**

**Orokid:**_ Like I said, it's weird. I really just wanted something I could write, due to my inability to do so recently. I've had a dry spell for both my comics and my fanfics, so I feel pretty screwed on the creative points of my self esteem right now. All I can say in my defense of this is that I warned you about this depressing garbage- and yet you still read it._

_Anyway… reviewing would be nice… Haha… Ha… … Ha… Ahem._


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